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Featured Shorty: “Diário de uma Quarent(o)ena II.”
A lot has happened, to say the least, since we last recorded a podcast episode!
We start out by challenging your comprehension with casual Portuguese conversation to get you up to speed on what’s been happening with us personally as well as in the world… since we know we are definitely your primary resource for all things COVID-19!
We spend the rest of the episode tweaking the pronunciation of our brave listeners who once again contributed their recordings. (Obrigado!)
We review the pronunciation of the different R, S, E, and O sounds, perfecting the cadence and flow of Portuguese sentences… plus, you’ll discover a word that even Rui has trouble pronouncing!

Enjoying food is an important part of the culture of Portugal. Whether you’re buying groceries, ordering at a restaurant, or just talking about food, you’ll need to be comfortable with the basics of Portuguese cooking vocabulary. To start, let’s focus on some of the things you might find in a Portuguese kitchen. Food Storage There […]

Exploring food groups is a convenient way to help us learn European Portuguese food vocabulary in a more organized way.

Dairy Products

First let’s look at some laticíniosdairy products

o leitemilk

o iogurteyogurt

o queijocheese

a manteigabutter

o geladoice cream

a natacream

Leite, iogurte, and queijo are a part of many Portuguese people’s breakfasts and snacks. Queijo, in particular, is very important and there are several tasty varieties. As for leite, there are 3 main types:

We Portuguese tend to shorten words whenever we can. So don’t be confused if instead of se faz favor you hear ´faz favor in fast, informal speech.

Thank You

The Portuguese expression is:

ObrigadoThank you, Obliged male speaker

ObrigadaThank you, Obliged female speaker

It’s said to be a leftover from a polite expression that went more or less like, “I am obliged (obrigado) to return your favour”. In fact, the English expression “much obliged” has the exact same meaning and would also be an accurate translation of Muito obrigadoThank you very much

Because you are the one who feels obliged to return the favour, your thank you must

There are a few different ways to say no, to make a sentence negative, or to refer to a quantity that is zero. Here are some of the important words to know:

nãono, not

nadanothing

ninguémnobody

nenhumnonemasculine

nenhumanonefeminine

Not

NãoNo, not

The simplest way to make a sentence negative in Portuguese is just to place the word nãono, not before the verb. This is the Portuguese equivalent of adding “no” or “not” to a sentence in English. Examples:

Esta mota é rápida.This motorbike is fast.

Esta mota não é rápida.This motorbike is not fast.

Double Negatives

nadanothingninguémnobodynenhumnonemasculinenenhumanonefeminine

As you’ll see below, nada, ninguém, nenhum, and nenhuma are sometimes used with the word não to form a double negative, which is a perfectly acceptable construction in Portuguese. The negatives don’t cancel each other out, but instead reinforce each other. In English, we use the word “any” instead, so that “I do not want none” becomes “I do not want any“.

Let’s go over each word to better understand how to use these negatives forms in context.

Nothing

NadaNothing is the equivalent of “nothing”. It is only used for things or abstract concepts, not for people. Examples:

Variable Words

Whether you’re just visiting or planning to live in Portugal, learning some food vocabulary is going to be pretty important! 😆

Let’s start with comer foragoing out to eat

Breakfast & Coffee

There are caféscafés, coffee shops and pastelariasbakeries, which are often part of the same establishment, for snacks and light meals. This is where you’ll go for um pequeno-almoçoa breakfast or um lanchea snack

Perhaps you’ll ask for um caféa coffee and the world-famous pastel de natacustard tart. A pastel is usually a small tart or cake, which can be sweet, like the pastel de nata, or savoury, like the pastel de bacalhaucodfish cake

Unfortunately for those who like protein-rich breakfasts, it’s less common to find ovoseggs on the traditional Portuguese breakfast menu, though they do appear in a number of dishes served later in the day.

There are many different typical coffee beverages in Portugal. If you just order um caféa coffee you will receive an espresso, unless you specify otherwise. Some of the other most common options are:

What’s the difference between mau and mal? What about bom and bem? These pairs of words are very similar in meaning, but they’re not interchangeable. It comes down to understanding the difference between adjectives and adverbs and how they are used in Portuguese.

Adjectives

Good and bad are adjectives, which modify nouns (people / places / things). In Portuguese, adjectives must agree with the noun in gender and number:

bomgood masc. sing.bonsgood masc. plur.

boagood fem. sing.boasgood fem. plur.

maubad masc. sing.mausbad masc. plur.

mábad fem. sing.másbad fem. plur.

Adverbs

Well and badly are adverbs, which modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. Adverbs are invariable, so the same words are used regardless of the gender and number of the noun.

bemwell

malbadly, poorly

Which One Do I Use?

Bom / Boa vs. Bem

Let’s look at these examples to illustrate the difference between bom/boa (adjectives) and bem (adverb).

After listening to our last podcast on foreign words derived from Portuguese, a Japanese member, Ryoko, came to our rescue with recordings of every Japanese word we mentioned, plus a bunch of new ones for good measure. Join us as we explore surprising similarities between Japanese and Portuguese in this bonus episode!

(“Arigato” once again to Ryoko Kawaoka for her generous time in preparing the list and recordings for this episode!)

When we talk about actions that are happening right at the time of speaking, we use the present continuous. Let’s start by taking a look at how this works in English.

Present continuous in the first person:

I am + verb ending in -ing

Example: I am driving

“I am” comes from the verb “to be” and is followed by the gerund form of the main verb (ending with -ing).

The Brazilian form is actually the most similar to English, so hopefully you’ll forgive us for mentioning it first! (We know you’re trying to focus on European and not Brazilian Portuguese, but it can be helpful and interesting to explore these differences sometimes. Plus, this gives you an easy way to spot if

Hoping for a calm, vegetarian dining experience at a local Portuguese restaurant, Sr. John gets thrown off guard by unprofessional service and a problem with his order! Find out how he deals with these challenges, and learn lots of vocabulary and expressions to use the next time you’re dining out.

AdjetivosAdjectives are words that describe a noun, assigning it a quality, state, appearance, or other property. Adverbs are also used to describe, but instead of nouns, they modify verbs, adjectives, and other adverbs. In Portuguese, using adjectives requires that you consider the gender and number of the word being modified, as well as the word order of the sentence.

Many different types of words can fall into the category of adjectives, including colours, shapes, materials, and nationalities. They are the words that let us distinguish between concepts like:

Possessives formed with de are less ambiguous: they agree strictly with the subject, not with the object. In contrast, seu and its derivatives agree with the object, so we are not able to differentiate between the several possible 3rd person subjects without extra context.

Dele, dela, deles, delas

delehis – When the subject is ele (him).

delaher – When the subject is ela (her).

delestheir – When the subject is eles (them, a group with at least one male).

delastheir – When the subject is elas (them, an all-female group).

Seu, sua, seus, suas

These are also used for the same 3rd person subjects, but the specific form used must match the gender and number of the object/noun being

The Ambiguity of Seu, Sua, Seus, and Suas

To review, the possessive pronouns/determiners for the third-person forms are the following:

Subject

Possessive Pronoun/Determiner

English Equivalent

Ele, Ela, Você

SeuSuaSeusSuas

His, Her/Hers, Your/Yours(formal)

Eles, Elas

SeuSuaSeusSuas

Their, Theirs

As you can see, elehe, him, elashe, her, vocêyouformal, elesthey, themmasc., and elasthey, themfem. all share the same exact possessive determiners! Since the determiners agree with both the number and the gender of the noun that is being possessed (rather than the subject), knowing precisely who we’re talking about is a bit tricky. Let’s see some examples:

Possessive Determiners vs. Possessive Pronouns

In this unit, we’re going to learn about possessive determiners and possessive pronouns in Portuguese, which both serve the function of expressing possession or ownership of something.

In English, we use my, your, his, her, their, and our as possessive determiners and mine, yours, his, hers, theirs, and ours as possessive pronouns.

Possessive determiners precede the noun they are modifying. They tell you to whom a specific item belongs. For example, in the sentence “It is my cat”, you can tell that the word “my” is a determiner because it needs to be followed by a noun (“cat”). “It is my” would not be a complete sentence.

Possessive pronouns replace the noun they are modifying. They convey ownership without telling what exactly is being owned. For example, in the sentence “It is mine”, you can tell that the word “mine” is a possessive pronoun because it can stand on its own in place of a noun.

Possessives in Portuguese

In Portuguese, possessive pronouns and possessive determiners make use of the same words: meu, teu, seu, nosso, vosso, as well as their feminine and plural forms. As you will see below, this means that there are multiple possible translations of a single English word. For both possessive determiners and possessive pronouns, you start by choosing the form that goes with the person possessing something, and then modify that word to match the gender and number of the noun being possessed.

At this point, you’re probably starting to get familiar with the verbs serto be permanent state and estarto be temporary state. Yet, even with a lot of practice, they are still easy to mix up! Don’t worry: in this unit you’ll learn more about when to use one versus the other.

A Basic Distinction: Ser vs Estar

Ser is used to describe permanent states or conditions. It refers to an immutable or long-lasting attribute of the person or object being described. Here’s the verb conjugated in the present tense:

Grammatically, it doesn’t take too long to learn the basics of addressing someone formally versus informally. But the most challenging aspects for estrangeirosforeigners tend to be the decisions that have to be made on a social level – not only understanding when it’s best to speak to someone formally, but choosing between the subtle variations of how formal language is used.

Even the natives (like Rui! 🇵🇹) have a hard time dissecting some of these unspoken social rules, so our aim is to make this the definitive resource of how to speak formally vs. informally in European Portuguese, and all the grey areas in between.

The Easy Stuff

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, we’ll start with the easy pronouns first: those which don’t have formal or informal variations.

First person

There is no distinction between formal and informal for the first person pronouns.